MPlayer-1.0pre7

If you downloaded any proprietary CODECs (which can provide support for additional audio and video formats such as Real, Indeo and QuickTime), extract them to /usr/lib/mplayer/codecs using the following commands as the root user (substitute and/or add different CODEC filenames, if necessary):

install -v -d -m755 /usr/lib/mplayer/codecs &&
tar -jvxf ../essential-20050412.tar.bz2 \
    -C /usr/lib/mplayer/codecs --strip-components=1 &&
chown -v -R root:root /usr/lib/mplayer/codecs

If you installed any CODECs, ensure you add --with-codecsdir=/usr/lib/mplayer/codecs to the configure script.

To enable building the GUI version of MPlayer (requires GTK+-1.2.10), add --enable-gui to the configure script. You'll also need to extract at least one skin. Extract the desired skin and create the default location (as the root user):

install -v -d -m755 /usr/share/mplayer/Skin &&
tar -jvxf ../Blue-1.4.tar.bz2 \
    -C /usr/share/mplayer/Skin &&
chown -v -R root:root /usr/share/mplayer/Skin/Blue &&
chmod -v 0755 /usr/share/mplayer/Skin/Blue{,/icons} &&
ln -sfv Blue /usr/share/mplayer/Skin/default

To enable OSD (On Screen Display) and subtitles support, add --enable-menu to the configure script. You'll also need to set up at least one font (see font installation instructions a little later).

MPlayer can build a shared post-processing library from the internal FFmpeg package which other packages can link to. This requires MPlayer to link dynamically to this library instead of the default statically linked method. If you desire to build the shared library, add --enable-shared-pp and --disable-fastmemcpy to the configure script. The --disable-fastmemcpy parameter is required to avoid undefined reference errors when other packages link to the shared library.

You may wish to examine the output from ./configure --help to find out what additional parameters to configure are needed to include the dependencies you have installed on your system.

Install MPlayer by running the following commands:

patch -Np1 -i ../MPlayer-1.0pre7-kernel_2.6-1.patch &&
./configure --prefix=/usr --confdir=/etc/mplayer \
    --enable-largefiles &&
make

This package does not come with a test suite.

Now, as the root user:

make install &&
install -v -m755 -d /usr/share/doc/mplayer-1.0pre7 &&
cp -v -R DOCS/* /usr/share/doc/mplayer-1.0pre7

Passing parameters to configure may result in the creation of libdha.so.1.0. If so, you may wish to create a symlink to this library in case other packages link to libdha.so. Use the following command as the root user to create the symlink:

ln -v -s libdha.so.1.0 /usr/lib/libdha.so

You will need codecs.conf only if you want to change its properties, as the main binary contains an internal copy of it. Ensure any changes you make to codecs.conf achieve the desired results, as incorrect entries in this file have been known to cause errors and render the player unusable. If necessary, create the file using the following command.

install -m644 etc/codecs.conf /etc/mplayer

You may also want to copy all the default configuration files to /etc/mplayer for future reference or more customization ability.

install -m644 etc/*.conf /etc/mplayer

MPlayer requires that the RTC run at a frequency of 1024 Hz. Make this setting change at boot-time by adding a line to /etc/sysctl.conf:

echo "dev.rtc.max-user-freq=1024" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

The recommended method to set up a font for MPlayer is to link a TTF file to your ~/.mplayer directory. A link should be created in each user's home directory who may use MPlayer. For example:

install -v -m750 -d ~/.mplayer &&
ln -v -sf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/luxisri.ttf \
    ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf

There are several other ways to set up a font package. To use a prerendered MPlayer font package, extract and link one of the font tarballs using the following commands:

tar -jvxf ../font-arial-iso-8859-1.tar.bz2 \
    -C /usr/share/mplayer/font &&
chown -v -R root:root /usr/share/mplayer/font &&
cd /usr/share/mplayer/font &&
ln -v -sf font-arial-iso-8859-1/font-arial-[font size]-iso-8859-1/* .

Available font sizes are 14, 18, 24 or 28.

Additional information as well as additional methods to set up an MPlayer font package can be found at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/subosd.html#mpsub-install.

If you want DVD playback with MPlayer, you need to ensure a link exists from your DVD drive to /dev/dvd. If necessary, create the link using the following commands:

cat >> /etc/udev/rules.d/24-dvd.rules << "EOF"
# Create a /dev/dvd symlink

KERNEL="[dvd drive]", SYMLINK="dvd"

EOF
udevstart

Replace [dvd drive] with whatever device is appropriate, for example hdc. If you don't know which device to choose, type:

dmesg | grep DVD

It should result in an output like:

hdc: Pioneer DVD-ROM ATAPIModel DVD-114 0110,
ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive